Literature Review: What is Art?

Name of Book: What is Art?

Author: Rosemary Davidson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary: This book, in a nutshell, gives us an introduction into the world of art and introduces the basics and foundations of art and the understanding of it to the reader. It infuses the art experience into its pages and also gives us different stages of understanding, appreciating and creating art. There are many parts to the book, ranging from the observation and our perspective of the things that are around us to creating art to learning the language of art. The first chapter covers the observation and perspective that we hold towards the world around us, and tells us how our observation added with our interests and background could shape our perspective of an art work. The next chapter covers the purpose of art in our world, be it recording a scene or decoration. The third chapter dwells into the magic and mysticism of art and how it came about in the supernatural scene. The next chapter tells us how an artwork can depict a deep and insightful story or message. The next two chapters cover the most common subject matters and aspects of paintings that depicts humans, which are the faces depicted in the painting and the expression it holds and the body language that is applied onto the subject matter of the painting and the things that it could tell us. The next chapter delves deeper into the application of art on everyday items, while the next two chapters tells us about the technicalities of being an artist; how to go about making art itself and how to earn a successful living from those pieces of art that you have made, and also covers things like copyright. The next one elaborates on different perspectives of different people and tells us how it affects the originality and novelty of the artwork made. The last chapter tells us about the language and symbolism that are commonly used here and there in artworks. Thus, this book touches on almost all the aspects of art and being an artist and provides a developmental depiction of art and how it affects society and community.

Review: First of all, we had chosen this book and included it as one of our literature reviews as we feel that art is very essential to our cause in educating the villagers in Vietnam more about water and its significance to human life and development. This is due to the fact that we are planning to use art therapy, or at least extensively use visual aids, in our presentations and the lesson packages that we are going to prepare for them. Hence, we need to do some research and study into the foundations of art and its various advantages and applications so that we could apply them for our lessons in the near future.

However, I think that this book is too simple and only covers the different aspects of art and its foundations in a very shallow and haphazard manner. It does not include the deep implications and impacts that art has on the human mind and thus proves that it does not really cater to our age group that much. However, I think that it is sufficient as only basic, prior knowledge is required to create a good enough lesson plan that makes use of art therapy.